Leicester Mercury article - October 2006.
15th June 2004, I will always remember as the worst day of my life, when the sonographer told us “we can’t find a heartbeat… your baby has died”. I was 41½ weeks pregnant, and had been admitted into hospital 3 hours earlier to have my labour induced. My beautiful son, whom I’d carried, protected and loved dearly for 9 months through a happy “textbook” pregnancy, was born on the evening of 17th June. It was the proudest and the saddest moment of my life. We held our sweet child savouring each moment, knowing that we would never hold him again.
Prior to losing Dhillon, I had never heard of babies dying so late into pregnancy. I thought that once you’d got past the first 3 months, everything would be fine. My consultant told me that 1 in about 1000 healthy and well nourished babies die at full term, for no obvious reason. Dhillon was one of those babies.
In the immediate days following Dhillon’s death, in spite of all the messages of sympathy and support, we both felt desperately isolated in our grief. No one really knew what to say to us, and the few that did usually said the wrong thing… “it could have been worse” or “it’s God’s way”. Time very quickly moved on, and so did many of our “friends” and family. I began to feel even more isolated. Whilst I had my parents and especially my sister to support me, I felt guilty talking or crying in front of them, as they too were grieving for their first grandson and nephew.
It was a hospital researcher that introduced me to Leicester SANDS only a week after Dhillon’s funeral. Michael and I sat quietly waiting for the “meeting” to start. Neither of us knew what to expect, we both felt uncomfortable about the whole thing, that is, until the others began to introduce themselves. We very quickly realised that we weren’t alone, although all our experiences and circumstances were different. I also have had one-to-one bereavement counselling through “The Laura Centre”, without which, I dread to think how I would have coped.
These groups have helped us through our tragedy and allowed us to support others in similar circumstances
Two years on, we have our second beautiful son, and continued support from the above 2 organisations. We both need to carry on thinking and talking about our angel Dhillon, and SANDS allows us to do so. It’s not about dwelling on the past, it’s about having friends that understand our loss and being accepted as “normal”.
Roopal - mum to Sahil (4) and Dhillon (born asleep 17th June 2004)
